by John Weisman
Weaver’s voice in Ritzik’s ear: “Got them.” The muzzle of Weaver’s rifle followed the chopper as it hovered for perhaps fifteen seconds above the ridgeline. Then the bird moved slowly to the north, carefully mimicking the S-curve of the road.
Weaver’s voice again: “Lost the pilots—have the gunner.”
Now a second HIP hove slowly into view. It flew two hundred yards behind and three hundred yards to the east of the first craft, engines screaming, rotors thud-thud-thudding. The second HIP lay back as the first chopper flew a slow and deliberate pass over the road, then disappeared over the northern end of the ridge where the Americans lay concealed.
Ritzik could see the machine gunner in the second chopper. He was hanging out the hatchway, scanning the ravine through field glasses. The goddamn aircraft was virtually on top of the truck before the asshole saw anything.
But he did see it. Ritzik could even see as the man’s lips moved excitedly.
He watched, transfixed, as Chopper Two banked in a tight arc and the pilots confirmed visual contact.
The door gunner disappeared, then reappeared in the doorway. He kicked a rope ladder out of the second chopper. Now the first chopper eased back into view.
Mickey D’s voice in Ritzik’s ear: “Everybody hold until the first troops are on the ground and there’s somebody on the ladder—the pilots will be concentrating on keeping the aircraft stable. Air currents in these ravines are treacherous.”
Ty’s voice: “Roger. I’m back on Aircraft One—got the pilots.”
Rowdy’s voice: “Doc, Mick, Bill: Chopper One; I got number two—me and the spooks.”
Ritzik’s voice: “Rowdy—Loner. What about me?”
Yates’s voice came back fast. “Loner, you watch and pick up the pieces if we leave anything alive.”
Rowdy shifted on the ground, checking his six to make sure that the backblast from the RPGs wouldn’t smack the ground behind him and send pieces of rock into his back. There were no optical sights on these weapons, only the KISS 21 flip-up iron tangent sights favored by guerrillas and terrorists.
He looked over to where Sam Phillips and his two comrades lay concealed, some eight yards abreast of him. “I’m going for the aircraft—the door gunner,” he called to them, his voice masked by the choppers. “You get the troops. You fire short bursts until they’re all down.”
Rowdy shifted focus. The door gunner was back at his post. He was dressed in Chinese Special Ops BDUs: olive-drab shirt over dappled, camouflage trousers. Unlike the Delta shooters, he wore no body armor. In his peripheral vision, Rowdy caught the door gunner in Chopper One dropping a ladder as the big craft hovered five yards above the ravine floor. But his focus remained steady on the second aircraft. He chewed the droopy corner of his mustache, happy with the way he’d positioned his people. The choppers had to descend below the ridgeline, which made it harder for them to take evasive action because they were walled in by Mother Nature. Meanwhile, Rowdy and his people held the high ground.
Rowdy checked the spooks and saw that they were ready. “Sun-Tzu says there are six terrains to be considered when setting the location of battle,” he said, looking in Kaz’s direction. “On steep terrain, the first to claim the high positions and the sunny side will be victorious.” He watched as the HIPs eased into the kill zone and then nodded at X-Man. “We’ve got the sunny side up today.”
The Chinese troops—those who actually made it onto the ground alive—would be forced to move uphill toward them, with very little cover and no concealment. Rowdy looked toward Sam Phillips. “The contour of the land is of great help to the victorious army if the general knows how to use it to his advantage. Remember that, Sam I am.”
Rowdy’s right hand settled around the trigger grip; his left hand held the front-heavy launcher steady. He followed the target as it approached. Rowdy liked the RPG. It was lightweight—the launcher and four rockets weighed less than forty pounds. Much more man-portable than a Carl Gustav or the old Italian Folgore. Sure, it wasn’t as accurate as either one. But at close quarters, which is all Rowdy worried about, it was deadly. Most of all, it was simple. And there were so many of them floating around that there was virtually nowhere on earth you went that you couldn’t obtain one. More to the point, since your adversaries almost certainly carried RPGs just like you did, you could kill them and come away with extra rounds. That, certainly, had been his experience in Mogadishu and Kosovo, Colombia, the Philippines, Lebanon, and northern Iraq.
He fixed the big exhaust of the chopper’s turbo engine in his sight. The bird was dropping slowly, slowly, now just fifteen feet off the road. The bottom of the ladder began to drag. A Chinese trooper, weapon slung over his back, swung out and clambered down, fighting the prop wash, the ground-effect vibration, and the ladder itself.
The son of a bitch almost fell as he caught a leg. Then he recovered, pulled himself up, got his leg free, and continued down two dozen rungs onto the road. He waved at the hatchway, then grabbed the ladder to stabilize it.
Rowdy waited until there were two men on the ladder. He saw the copilot’s face, looking down and back, anxiously, as the soldiers descended. His eyes shifted to the door gunner. And then he lowered the sight picture slightly, and squeezed the RPG’s trigger.
That action ignited a powder charge, which ejected the grenade from the launcher with a loud explosive ka-boom at 84 meters per second. Rowdy was careful to watch as the round flew away, to make sure that all four of the stabilizing fins had deployed. If one of them hadn’t, the damn thing could cartwheel, reverse course, and come back to bite him on the ass. He knew that 5 meters—six one-hundredths of a second—after it left the muzzle, the grenade warhead had armed itself. After 11 meters—thirteen one-hundredths of a second—the sustainer rocket fired with a loud shrieeek. There was a huge flash, and the rocket accelerated to its full velocity: 294 meters a second.
Chopper Two was less than eighty meters from where Rowdy lay. It took less than a third of a second—.2721 of a second to be precise—for the rocket’s Piezo-electric fuse to crush against the interior of the choppers starboard-side interior wall, igniting the 94 percent RDX high-explosive warhead.
The explosion blew the minigunner clear out of the aircraft. Rowdy could see wounded Chinese tossing themselves about inside the fuselage. The aircraft stuttered—maybe shrapnel had hit the hydraulics or guidance systems. It didn’t matter. Either way, the pilots had to fight like hell to bring the chopper under control.
But Rowdy wasn’t watching anymore. His attention had moved on to the second threat—the soldiers on the ground. He screamed, “C’mon, assholes—get the sons of bitches,” at the spooks, who shook themselves out of whatever Langley-influenced stupor they were in and began to lay down a stream of suppressive fire at the Chinese troops.
And then Rowdy was reloading, quickly but firmly jabbing a second rocket into the blunderbuss muzzle of the launcher, bringing the weapon up onto his shoulder, and aligning his sight picture. The process took him less than seven seconds.
He fired again. The round cleared the RPG cleanly. But the chopper dropped precipitously as the pilot tried to keep his aircraft from spinning into the ground.
The HIP began to buffet. The rocket flew over the top of the bird and exploded against the far ravine wall.
Rowdy cursed. Quickly, he stuffed a third rocket—an OG-7 high-explosive fragmentation grenade—into the launcher’s muzzle.
Now the chopper careened to the right, arcing away from him like a clay bird coming out of a skeet house. Teeth clenched, Rowdy swung the grenade launcher around, following the HIP’s trajectory. He forgot about the iron sights. Instead, he let the wide RPG warhead overtake the center of the cockpit, almost as if he were swinging a big, lethal paintbrush. And just as he “painted” the leading side of the chopper’s glassed-in nose with a smooth, even stroke, he pulled the trigger and “Hoo-ah!” remembered to follow through the swing.
22
125 Kilometers East-No
rtheast of Tokhtamysh.
0748 Hours Local Time.
FROM EIGHTY YARDS AWAY, Ty Weaver’s 168-grain boat-tail bullet caught HIP One’s pilot in the philtrum—that small indentation between the bottom of the nose and the top of the lip. The shot was catastrophic: the target’s central nervous system was destroyed and he was brain-dead before he even realized he’d been shot. The chopper lurched vertically ten yards. The HIP’s sudden movement shook three Chinese off the rope ladder. They fell hard, twenty-five feet onto the road below. One scrambled away. The other two lay stunned.
The sniper moved the crosshairs of his sight to his left, found his secondary target—the copilot’s throat—and squeezed the trigger. Weaver saw the man’s head snap sideways. Then the HIP corkscrewed to the right and dropped stonelike forty feet, smacking hard onto the roadbed and shearing its port-side tire off.
The chopper bounced once, then twice, crushing the two soldiers who’d fallen from the ladder. Ty squinted through the ten-power scope, and wasn’t happy with what he saw: the copilot in profile, blood oozing from his neck, still alive, working frantically to operate the controls and save his aircraft. The sniper focused again, his pulse steady, his breathing even, his right index finger easing tighter on the trigger.
The HIP dragged itself to clockwise, blades kicking up dust and stones, rotating on its broken landing-gear strut. Ty cursed silently. Now—when he could see at all—what he saw was the profile of the pilot, head thrown back, strapped dead into his seat.
The pitch of the HIP’s rotor blades changed audibly, and their velocity slowed. But the big bird still scraped across the ground. As it came around, Ty’s scope picked up the minigunner. The poor bastard was fighting centrifugal force, trying to hold on but still vainly searching for a target. The sniper tracked the hatchway, led the target slightly, then squeezed the trigger, the rifle muzzle actually following through the shot. The door gunner pitched backward into the cabin and disappeared.
The HIP’s nose smacked up against a boulder. The wounded bird finally came to rest. Ty’s crosshairs settled on the cockpit. He saw the copilot’s hand move on the collective handle. He raised the crosshairs until they found the zygomatic bone, the thin plate covering the brain between the eye and the ear. He eased the sight back, lifting the crosshairs until they touched the tip of the helix—the curled, upper edge of the target’s ear. And then he squeezed the trigger, watching as the copilot’s head disintegrated with the shot.
Ritzik blinked as the HIP ground itself to a halt. He raised himself out of his concealed position. “Mickey—” The pilot had the RPG leveled at the chopper. Why the hell wasn’t he shooting? “Cream the goddamn thing,” he ordered.
But Mickey D obviously had other ideas. “C’mon—” He dropped the RPG. “Ty—give us cover.” He grabbed his AK and charged down the ravine toward the chopper, followed by Doc Masland and Bill Sandman.
Ritzik scrambled after the trio, pistol in hand. He was eight, maybe ten yards behind the other three, still crabbing down the ravine, when a bullet kicked up rock splinters six inches from his right foot. He spun, rolled to his left, and brought the pistol muzzle up.
A Chinese Special Forces soldier, helmet askew, was coming up the hill, firing his rifle from the hip. He shot wildly in Ritzik’s direction, his eyes wide in double-take shock as he spotted Ritzik’s camouflaged but unmistakably Occidental face. The rifle jammed.
The soldier dropped the weapon, reached into a pouch on his chest, and pulled out a grenade. Ritzik head-shot him—tap-tap—just as he was yanking the pin.
But not quickly enough. The spoon still flew. Time stood still. Ritzik watched as the small sliver of metal arced toward him. His eyes followed its trajectory, and saw behind it how beautiful and clear the morning sky was; how the high white clouds actually intensified the blueness. Ritzik threw his arms over his face and neck and tried to find cover behind the low rocks.
The Chinese crumpled. And he took the brunt of the blast. But not all of it. Something hot and sharp smacked into Ritzik’s flak jacket, knocking the breath out of him. He rolled over, checked himself quickly. He was okay. He half crawled, half walked to the dead Chinese. The man had been cut in two. Ritzik rolled away, looking down the hill. Mickey D was already clambering toward the HIP, AK in hand.
The warrant officer ducked under the still-spinning rotor blades. He came upon a Chinese soldier lying crushed under the fuselage, weapon still in his hands. The warrant officer shot him once in the head, then moved forward, crouched, until he reached the hatchway. He reached in, his gloved hand caught the door gunner’s harness, and he pulled the dead man out of the aircraft, drawing fire. The warrant officer dropped flat. Crawling, Mickey D made his way below the hatch, moving to the tail. Once he was safely beyond the opening, he slowly, slowly, raised himself until he could see the forward portion of the chopper, looking into the cockpit area.
He hand-signaled that the cockpit, at least, was clear. Doc Masland eased up to the opposite side of the open hatch, scanning as much of the tail portion of the fuselage as he could. Bill Sandman came up behind him. He put his left hand on Masland’s shoulder to let him know he was in position.
Slowly, Masland “cut the pie,” sliding closer and closer to the open hatchway to allow himself an ever-increasing slice of vision into the rear section of the fuselage. He could see most of the right side of the cargo cabin. The canvas troop benches were flush against the bulkheads. Masland’s vision was obscured by a pile of what appeared to be cargo netting in the rear of the cabin.
Ritzik came up behind Mickey D. Sandman pointed groundward. Ritzik tapped the warrant officer, who dropped onto hands and knees. The Doc put a booted foot on Mickey D’s back. Weapon at the low ready, he stepped quickly into the fuselage and moved directly to his rear, scanning as he went. Immediately, there was gunfire—three three-round bursts—from Masland’s AK. Without hesitation, Bill Sandman stepped into the chopper cabin and moved in the opposite direction, edging toward the chopper’s cockpit, his back to the fuselage bulkhead.
Most Special Operations units practice room-clearing with four-or six-man teams. Ritzik’s Sword Squadron was different. His unit was capable of clearing rooms with two, four, six, eight, even ten men at a time, depending on the size of the space and the level of the threat. Moreover, Doc Masland and Bill Sandman had trained together for years, the pair of them clearing spaces that ran the gamut from trinity tenements to town houses, to apartments of all shapes and sizes. They’d taken down double-wides, center-hall colonials, ramblers, and eight-thousand-square-foot McMansions; they’d rehearsed on embassies, office suites, schools, barracks, even jails. They scenarioed ways of dealing with stairwells, hallways, and corridors with eccentric configurations. They’d practiced assaulting warehouses stacked with cargo containers, pallets, or floor-to-ceiling shelving. They’d learned how to clamber up icy North Sea oil rigs and board cruise ships in port or on the high seas; they’d worked on successful tactics to use for taking down buses, clearing trailer trucks, and attacking aircraft of every size and shape. And they’d even rehearsed dealing with hostage-taking no-goodniks who’d commandeered a transport chopper—a scenario, incidentally, more than thirty years old, dating from the Black September terrorists who’d killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
And so, the two Delta shooters worked like the proverbial well-oiled machine, flowing into the area without hesitation, the first man taking the long side of whatever space they were attacking, the second following to cover his teammate’s weakest side.
Sandman understood exactly where Doc Masland was going to be. So when he sensed movement at his ten o’clock he knew it wasn’t his brother-in-arms. Sandman’s AK came up and his finger moved from its indexed position on the receiver to the trigger. His peripheral vision caught the movement again. He moved forward toward the threat, releasing one and then another three-shot burst as he advanced.
“My twelve—” Ritzik heard Sandman’s voice in his earpiece.
It was followed by one-two-three three-shot bursts. Now he stepped up and entered the chopper cavity. Moved quickly but smoothly heel-toe, heel-toe over the greasy decking, easing to his right along the bulkhead following in Doc Masland’s trail, his pistol’s field of fire centered on the far-side rear corner of the fuselage.
Doc shouted, “My two—” and fired two three-shot bursts.
There was movement at Ritzik’s ten o’clock. His pistol came up and he put one-two-three-four shots into the target. It wasn’t clean shooting but it was effective.
And then Ritzik’s weapon locked back. He’d forgotten to count rounds. He was empty. Like some damn greenhorn on his first day in the shoot house. He was a freaking overpaid RTO. He shouted, “Cover!”
Without removing his gaze from possible threats, Ritzik dropped the magazine out of the well, slipped to one knee, retrieved a fresh fifteen-rounder from his thigh and smacked it into place with the flat of his hand, then released the slide with his right thumb. He shouted, “Okay!” and stood.
Just in time to catch movement at his twelve. Ritzik and Masland shot simultaneously and a Chinese soldier went down. Masland was moving now, using his foot to kick weapons away from dead hands. Quickly, he checked the bodies for signs of life. He found none. He shouted, “Clear!”
Mickey D vaulted into the chopper and made for the cockpit. He reached over the bodies for the power switches and shut the engines down. “Bill, gimme a hand.” The pair of them pulled the dead pilot and his number two out of their shoulder harnesses and seat belts. They dragged the corpses aft and rolled them out of the hatch. The pilot slapped the HIP’s airframe. “I’m going to see if it’s still fly-able,” he said to his partner.
Ritzik helped Doc Masland pull six Chinese soldiers out of the HIP’s cargo cabin. With the door gunner, the two pilots, and the other three from the ladder, there were ten in all. Ritzik pressed the transmit button on his radio. “Rowdy, Loner—sit-rep me.”